A WORD OF THE SPEAKER

 It gives me great pleasure to welcome you to the website of the ECOWAS Parliament. Here you will find every information available about this Community institution that is different from the others in that its vocation ,and indeed its very essence, places it in closest proximity to the grassroots populations of West Africa. You will discover what our Community Parliament is all about and this site will also help you deepen and update your knowledge about its powers, its composition and functions and the prospects for its future growth.

At the moment, the ECOWAS Parliament plays an essentially consultative role. In other words, it provides advisory opinion on issues covering a wide range of areas that are of crucial importance for the integration process. These include respect for human rights, the interconnection of communication and telecommunication links, health, education, and revisions of basic community texts. A Decision dated 12 January 2006 defines the process by which regional executives can make referrals to the Parliament. It also specifies the timeframes within which recommendations and requests for advisory opinion are to be formulated and transmitted to the ECOWAS Parliament.

The ECOWAS Parliament has 115 seats, which are distributed among the 15 ECOWAS Member States on the basis of their population. Nigeria, which has by far the largest population, has 35 seats while the least populated, such as Togo and Gambia, have 5 seats each. The Parliament’s political organs are the plenary, the Bureau, the Conference of Bureaux and the parliamentary standing committees. A General Secretariat, under the authority of the Speaker of Parliament, is responsible for the administration of Parliament

Early in life of the Parliament, the Authority of Heads of State and Government showed its desire to speed up the process by which the institution would evolve from its present consultative role to that of a full-fledged legislative body.  Accordingly, the authorities set about restructuring the Parliament and, at the conclusion of the exercise in 2006, a number of vital   actions had been idenaified to help achieve this aim.

One of the outcomes of restructuring was that the term of office of the Speaker was reduced from 5 to 4 years, to reflect the directives of the Authority of Heads of State that the terms of office of all ECOWAS heads of institution should be the same.  The ECOWAS Parliament is currently going through a transitional stage at the end of which its Members will be elected by direct universal suffrage.

HON.MAHAMANE OUSMANE

SPEAKER OF THE ECOWAS PARLIAMENT